The song I have chosen to pitch to my group is Paper Planes by MIA. This song fits into the R&B/slow rap genre. We had to choose one song that we would be interested in having as an option for our music videos. I picked a few options which are all included at the end of the presentation but narrowed it down to just the one eventually which I will pitch to my music video group. The song I chose was Paper Planes by M.I.A because it was very up beat and I thought a majority lip syncing video to go along with this sound would look very effective. She has a really nice tone of voice also so I need to take this into account when choosing my performer.

Summary of the song

In this song, M.I.A. plays up the stereotype of a menacing illegal immigrant, forging documents and threatening violence. It was inspired by her trying to enter America on a visa (she is a British citizen of Sri Lankan descent). However the lyrics don’t portray this message on first listen, you have to look deeper into the song but this message of inequality could be narrated well within a video.

I made a small presentation exclaiming why and what my ideas are behind the narrative and performance of my idea was. Within this, I’ve also included the lyric video and a word cloud consisting of the words that came to my head when I read the lyrics and listened to the song. I also researched what the song was initially supposed to be about to gather a deeper understanding about the lyrics.

Here is my mini pitch